


The Hyacinth Girl and The Man With Three Staves

by wreathed



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Cheating, F/M, Flirting, Flowers, Hospital, Jealousy, Kissing, Literature, M/M, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-15
Updated: 2010-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's mind, one of an ordinary idiot, is complex before it is incredible; littered with thoughts as if a <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html">Waste Land</a>. Against Sherlock, he never had a chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hyacinth Girl and The Man With Three Staves

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by inappropriately and ukcalico. Set a short while after the ending of _The Great Game_.

“Flowers,” Sherlock says, eyeing the bunch John is clenching in his fist. He’s quietly incensed already, John deduces, from spending too many hours under the care and rules of others. “From Moriarty; should have known. So sub-standard when he stoops to cliché.”

There is no card with the flowers, and the two men have been treated in separate wards. A shot in the dark is unusual for Sherlock ( _or not_ , John thinks wryly as, in a flash, he remembers Sherlock with his finger on the trigger) and with this shot he has not been so lucky. John clears his throat. “They’re from Sarah.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows rise, just a fraction. “Oh. Even more of a cliché, and an enduring one at that. How disappointing.”

“Predictable is fine sometimes, Sherlock.”

“No, no. People run straight to the predictable when they don’t _know_ what to do. When they can think of nothing better. She had nothing to say. She’s weak. Leave them here. I don’t like having flowers inside.”

“But she came back.” He knows his voice is betraying his disbelief.

“I didn’t say she didn’t care for you,” Sherlock returns, his mouth curling into a snarl. And John used to think that Sherlock could never care for anything, that the mere word would sear into his friend’s skin, uncomfortable and alien, but now his dreams are filled with the sound of _Alright? Are you alright?_ , said with great urgency, as well as the sound of gunshots.

The nurse discharges them. John does what Sherlock wants him to, as always. John follows the swish of his coat past ambulance sirens and daily tragedies that do not concern them into a waiting taxi, and all the way home.

*

But he does not follow without question. He’s out in the field no longer. He follows with his own alterations when he knows that he knows best. Rare when he’s in awe of such a brilliant mind, but it happens. Before university meant his scientific studies became specialist by necessity, John was enamoured with the physics of the planets. Sometimes Sherlock ignores the things that matter.

He leaves behind the bouquet – a veritable explosion of colour, bright against the expanse of hospital walls painted a sickly shade of vanilla, welcome from the moment she had handed the gift over – but extracts a single flower for safe-keeping: a tiny bloom with a long dense cluster of blossoms, half-crushed. He twists the stalk around his finger twice as he puts it in his pocket.

If Sherlock sees, he gives no indication of doing so.

*

Later, as he watches Sherlock pile up dismembered fingers in the refrigerator like beer cans, fury at Sherlock's assertions catches up with him. _Sarah’s not weak in the slightest,_ John thinks furiously (though does not say a thing out loud, because Sherlock wouldn’t care). She had barely known him when that escapologist’s dart had pointed straight at her heart. Yet when at last released, she had not fled to protect herself from the next poised weapon. She had come back.

 _Fear death by water_ he thinks, for the first time in years, but Afghanistan was landlocked and dry as dust ( _I will show you fear..._ he would tell Harry, too stupid and wrapped up in herself to understand what war is), and Carl Powers remains the only dead body to lie in that swimming pool.

*

Sherlock knows nothing about poetry. He considers literature an irrelevant distraction, another waste of time. John, an occasional reader (never writer), had stopped bothering with it after his first deployment. Even the ones that had known war – Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, he’d studied both of those at school; they’d had no chance at all of a doctor’s cure when shot down – were wrong to try and make their verse beautiful when it described such terrible things.

 _April is the cruellest month_ tugs grudgingly at the edges of his brain like something not worth remembering, but this year that isn’t true: he has Sherlock in one sense and Sarah in another and has escaped a dangerous man. He has been saved the worst outcome each time: a return to living alone and numb; her giving up on him, scared or else disinterested; the deadly explosion that he’d avoided for all those years.

*

“Did you know what the flowers meant?”

John looks up and scrunches his face into a perplexed expression, as if Sherlock is mad. His eyes glance to the side. “Sorry?” It’s the first time Sherlock has said anything to him today, although there has not been quiet. Still, Sherlock does not move from the sofa. “Get well soon? I am willing to see past the fact that your flatmate keeps body parts in the fridge and would like us to continue to date for a while? It was sweet of her. And appropriate.”

“Ah, appropriateness. That all important trait-”

“Sherlock-”

“You misunderstand my question,” Sherlock intones carefully, turning his violin bow over with elegant fingers. “Did you know the meaning of the individual flowers you received?”

“Well... no, of course I didn’t. It’s not the nineteenth century! I think the language of flowers has passed us by. We’re sexually enlightened beings now.” He pauses, then curiosity overtakes his acidic tone. “How come _you_ know about that stuff?” he asks, then scoffs. “Can’t see you trying to court a woman. In what way is the language of flowers, but _not_ the arrangement of our solar system, ‘useful information’?”

“Killers like symbolism,” Sherlock drawls, his face quite serious. “I’d assumed Moriarty had sent the flowers because he _likes_ that sort of thing. That sort of theatrical, clever joke. And it was an unusual arrangement,” Sherlock continues calmly, as if he were describing the peculiarities of a Mozart piano concerto rather a warning from his only worthy nemesis. “Begonias: ‘beware’. Violets: ‘you occupy my thoughts’. Bird’s Foot Trefoil: ‘ _revenge_ ’. Not that usual in a florist’s.”

“She likes them,” John says quietly. “Those yellow flowers. It reminds her of when she was young. Family walks along cliff tops and sand dunes.” This is the sort of thing he knows early on – not through deduction, but discussion. He listens. Women like that.

(Sherlock rarely listens. John rarely cares.)

“Are you sure it was your girlfriend who gave you the flowers?” Sherlock asks.

“Quite sure. She had them when she came to visit. No explosives under her jacket,” and to his pleasure and unease, Sherlock laughs. “She just bought some nice flowers because it was a nice thing to do. Probably already arranged in the shop. You’re over-complicating things.”

“I do _not_ over-complicate things.” Sherlock mutters with mild disdain.

“You see too much. And she’s not my girlfriend. It’s early days, yeah?”

“Good, fine,” Sherlock says coolly, picking up his violin again.

*

John wonders whether Sherlock can tell when John is not just watching him, but watching him and wishing he could have every inch of his skin under his hands, find the gaps between his bones, his weak spots, to remind himself that Sherlock is only human. To see whether or not he can be undone by the oldest trick in the book like any other man, or whether he will always see too much to merely feel.

*

Everything with Sherlock progresses at a vastly accelerated rate. John likes that he does not yet know Sarah’s favourite food, or whether she’s ever been married before. Such a welcome antidote to a man from which you can keep no secrets.

Tonight’s their fifth date – Sarah’s local, a gastropub kind of place, no complaints – and they have not yet kissed. But most relationships do not begin with a Chinese smuggling ring, or get interrupted in their infancy by five fatally difficult puzzles and the consulting criminal’s sniper. John makes allowances accordingly.

“Can I kip on the edge of your bed tonight, then?” John asks her when they’re outside, grinning – his arm around her waist, a bottle of wine gone between them. No interruption yet from Sherlock, and John has found that has made him annoyed – he remains braced for the man’s entrance, unable to stop thinking of him until his inevitable intrusion has occurred.

It has started raining a little. They shouldn’t stay out here too long.

“I think, it might even,” Sarah whispers into his ear, pub chatter from within turning into white noise. “It might by now be _the time after that_.”

He kisses her. Her arms wrap around him, full, and her hair smells of the rain.

*

They fall against each other in her hallway, kissing, panting, her hair still wet. It isn't until he's hard, his hands spread over her clothed breasts and her hands keenly pressing his shoulders against the wall, that his message tone rings out.

“Ignore it,” Sarah tells him, kissing him again. “Ignore it. John-”

“No, no, I have to go,” he tells her, putting his discarded coat back on again. “I’m so sorry. I’ll take you out tomorrow. I’m really sorry.”

“John,” Sarah says resignedly, watching him. “I like you. But even after he stopped inviting himself along, he’s called you away every single bloody time-”

“I’ll sort it,” he says, kissing her closed-mouth and quick. “I’ll sort it,” he says, closing the door behind him, knowing he is able to do no such thing.

*

It transpires that, like all the other previous times he’s departed early from his dates, there is no new case to discuss, and no-one has cracked _The Science Of Deduction_ ’s latest code.

“You picked out a hyacinth,” Sherlock begins, standing in their living room.

John, leant against the wallpaper, looks up at him slowly. The flower he took at the hospital lies wilted on his bedside table, the tiny petals crumbling away like confetti.

“Hyacinths,” Sherlock explains, “mean ‘constancy’. Or ‘games’.”

“There’s no meaning in the flowers,” he reminds Sherlock, as if he needed to be reminded. “No puzzle.”

“I am the one constant in your life,” Sherlock tells him, carefully and firmly.

John smiles disbelievingly. “There’s nothing constant about you,” he says.

“I know you’ve had an above average number of girlfriends,” Sherlock continues. “Although none for a while – disregarding Sarah, of course. As you just have.” John narrows his eyes fractionally. “Have any of them made you happy?”

“And how do you know how many relationships I’ve had?” John laughs mirthlessly. “The lines around my eyes? The colour of my socks?”

“I stole your phone and called your sister,” Sherlock tells him indifferently.

There is a lengthy silence.

“You don’t call people.”

“It’s not the kind of information you can get from a text. Did any of them make you happy? Because it sounds like-”

“Sherlock-” John starts, then momentarily closes his eyes. “Yes, for a while. But they tire in the end, unless I tire first. Relationships end. And one day, you will tire of me too, and that day will come around much quicker if I am relying on you entirely. Trust me.”

“I will never tire of you,” Sherlock tells him, in the low light of their flat.

“Sarah is... soon, Sarah and I will-” _He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time._ “You can’t give me everything I need.”

“Try me,” Sherlock replies, steepling his fingers.

John presses his lips together in embarrassment and frustration. _Oh, you know,_ he thinks. _You must know._ “Do you want me?” he asks, and Sherlock’s mouth quirks up as he tilts his head to one side.

“If it means you won’t want anyone else. Is that the same thing?”

John’s eyes dart across his straight lips, the line of his neck. “You’ve got to want _me_. You’ve got to be _interested_.”

“I am interested. _Fascinated_. Sex is such a fleeting thing, and yet it’s brought so many great men to their knees...”

“There is some attraction in bringing great men to their knees,” John tells him, half-joking, and he finds that his throat is dry when he next swallows.

He steps a little closer and John sees that his cheeks are slightly flushed, hears that his voice is rougher than usual. Blood rushes through him as if they have been chased here. Never has John been more aware that their bodies are not yet touching. “I am interested in you,” Sherlock says.

 _A sociopath will have no problem lying coolly and easily._ John recalls once reading, as he stares straight into Sherlock’s pale eyes - and then he remembers, once again, echoing off water and tiled walls, _Alright? Are you alright?_

*

He does what Sherlock wants him to, as always.

There is no greater thrill than holding his attention, John has found. No greater thrill. _And if you don't give it him, there's others will_. Sherlock’s hand grasps John’s waist, and he hopes he will not be interrupted this time.

 _If London manages half an hour without a suspicious murder,_ John realises, suddenly too distracted to think cleverly, _we will be left undisturbed_. His saboteur is right here with him.

And then John hears his mobile sound from his pocket and he feels guilt stab through him like a Chinese crossbow might when he knows who it almost certainly will be. And Sherlock just stares at him, rarely blinking, eyes dilated and sharp like John’s his prey, hands just above John’s hips and pushing him hard against their wall until the phone rings off. And John doesn’t move a muscle.

Sherlock leans in.

*

For a long time now they have watched the burial of their dead, and Moriarty has played with them a fiendish game of chess – hostages as pawns, Sherlock countering every move and anticipating the next.

Sherlock’s mouth against John’s own, frenetic and unforgettable; the scrape of his teeth against John’s bottom lip, his murmured words, close (warnings and exaltations). And then the tangling together of their fingers as they undress, the touch of his heated skin. This is the fire sermon; death by water still threatens them, is yet to come.


End file.
